‘And if I refuse?’
‘I will personally kill them, one by one, and take their heads.’ The words were said carelessly, but he kept his eyes as cold as the other man’s. ‘You must make your decision now. If you agree, you may recover your dead.’
Claudius Victor stared at him for a long time. Valerius had a feeling the Batavian wanted to tear him apart with his bare hands, but even as he watched the eyes lost their menace. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to appear any more careless than I do already. I accept.’ As he spoke, he moved his horse closer and Valerius’s hand strayed towards his sword. But the Batavian was only studying every detail of his face, taking in the lines, the scar that disfigured him from brow to lip, and the fathomless dark eyes that gave a hint to the qualities of the inner man: strength, determination and lethal intent. When he was satisfied, Victor looked down at Valerius’s carved wooden hand as if he had only just noticed it. ‘Not something to be easily forgotten,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘I will remember you, cripple; killer of my brother. We are a patient people, and when we meet again, as we will, I will take great pleasure in killing you in the old way.’ He nodded and turned away, and Valerius and Otho rode back to the Vascones.
‘How do you know the slippery bastard won’t come after us anyway?’ Otho asked. ‘He didn’t look like the kind who would care too much about a few prisoners, especially if you killed his brother.’
‘No,’ Valerius didn’t look back. ‘But he’s lost a lot of men and I doubt his troopers would thank him for losing any more, especially if we keep their heads. The head is the repository of a Batavian’s soul. That’s why they keep skulls as trophies: to deprive their enemy of his. They’re a hard people, the Batavians; good soldiers, but quick to anger. If Victor sacrifices his men, the next head they take might be his.’
‘What did he mean by killing you in the old way?’
Valerius turned in the saddle and looked back to where his enemy watched implacably from the far side of the field.
‘It’s not encouraged these days, but the Batavians liked to burn their prisoners alive. Slowly.’
II
‘We don’t have any choice. We have to go back.’
Otho shook his head. The suggestion was unacceptable. ‘Our only option is to carry on. My orders from the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis were clear.’
Valerius noticed the aristocrat didn’t refer to Galba by the grandiose title the governor had awarded himself – Lieutenant to the Senate and People of Rome – and wondered what that signified. They had stopped to rest near the burned-out ruins of an estate on the west bank of the Rhodanus, the great river that linked Lugdunum with the port of Massilia. He walked to the pebble shore and looked out across the glittering waters, east, towards home.
‘You heard what the Batavian said. Every pass to Italia is guarded. By now he will have reported back to his headquarters and the place will be swarming with patrols, every one of them looking for a party of twenty-five men, led by a well-dressed aristocrat on a fine horse. You cannot change what you are and I cannot hide twenty-five men. We must go back. It is for …’ Valerius knew it wasn’t worth appealing to the man’s instinct for self-preservation, which lagged many leagues behind his political aspirations, ‘the good of the Empire. If you die, who will Galba be able to rely on? Titus Vinius, whose only loyalty is to himself? Cornelius Laco, a drunkard too lazy even to harbour ambition?’
The other man frowned. It was the same question Otho had been asking himself since Galba had tasked him with this mission. And the closer he came to the sword points of the enemy, the more he doubted his patron’s motives. A few years earlier Marcus Salvius Otho had been as close to Nero as anyone in the young Emperor’s increasingly debauched court: close enough to offer him the sexual favours of his wife, Poppaea. But Poppaea had captivated the Emperor and Otho had been ordered to divorce her. He had become an embarrassment and a liability. It said much for his powers of persuasion that he had been sent into virtual exile as governor of far-away Lusitania, Rome’s most westerly province and a rural backwater, rather than quietly executed. Galba’s bid for power had given Marcus Salvius Otho an opportunity to return to Rome with honour and the promise of advancement, but the opportunity came at a price and with a high risk. To claim it Otho would have to march into the very heart of Nero’s Rome and just one slip would bring torture and death. But the governor of Lusitania did not lack courage. He shook his head. ‘My mission is too important.’